Apology
by Fluffy-CSI
Summary: Postep for the Tagman episode. Everyone's written fics about Alex being mad at Bobby, but I got to wondering why no one ever let him be angry about the way things turned out. BA


A/N: Better late than never...I caught a re-run of the Tagman episode this week and my curiosity was piqued by the scene where they're in the conference room and Bobby is arguing against the death penalty. He kept looking to the side, where Alex sat, over and over, obviously waiting for her to say something, and I got to thinking..."You know, if I were him, I'd be kind of pissed that she left me twisting in the wind." Plus, all the Tagman fics I've read seem to have Bobby being at fault and trying to apologize to Alex, and I found myself wondering why no one was going at it from his side. And thus...here ya go.

A/N 2: This is quite possibly the shortest fic I've ever written. Didn't even crack 3000! Maybe one day I'll wean myself off my massively long multi-chapter never-ending fics...

Disclaimer: Dick Wolf's characters. I own nothing and am making no money off any of my fics.

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"Bobby! Wait up!" Alex called as she tried not to look like she was actually chasing her partner down a public hallway. "What the . . . would you just slow _down_?"

He glanced over his shoulder at her, gave her an coldly impersonal smile, and looked away again. "Work day's over, Eames. Go home."

He would be unmanageable in his current mood, she knew from experience. Better to just let him go and wait until he had cooled down.

But damn it, now _she _was getting pissed, just from trying to deal with his attitude. She had a strong urge to pull off one of her heeled shoes and hurl it at his retreating back, but she forcibly quashed that desire and settled for gritting her teeth angrily and pondering the best way to kill him as she made her way more decorously out of the building and onto the sidewalk.

"Eames?" a voice asked, startling her out of her violent thoughts. She turned to find Deakins standing a few feet away, obviously having pulled himself out of a conversation with a man standing across from him. "Was that Goren?" he asked her with slightly widened eyes. "He just blew past like I wasn't even here."

She sighed. Of _course _they couldn't keep this under control; things never worked out like that when it came to trying to handle her partner. "It was him. He's . . . having a bad day."

"I'll say," Deakins said with a snort. "He mad at you, too, or just the rest of us?"

"Oh, I'm on his shit list today too, Captain," she said dully. "I would avoid calling him in tonight for anything but the end of the world, if I were you."

He nodded, resigned to having to treat his resident genius with short-term kid gloves. "See what you can do with him, if you're up to it."

"Yeah, I'll try." She couldn't say she was looking forward to it, but even if Deakins hadn't asked her to, she would have tried anyway. Under his show of anger, her partner was genuinely was genuinely distressed at the way things had worked out with this case and, frankly, she herself wasn't too happy with it either, although for different reasons. They needed to talk.

If, that was, he hadn't changed the locks on his apartment door by the time she got there. And if he hadn't short-sheeted her side of the bed.

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She pushed open his door an hour later with a caution that was in sharp contrast to the eager way she usually entered. "Bobby?"

"Not tonight." His voice rose from an easy chair that had its back to the door; if she wanted to see his face, she'd have to walk all the way into the room and circle around.

"Yes, 'tonight,'" she contradicted as calmly as she could, stepping in and shutting the door behind her. "You're obviously upset, and-"

"_Upset_?" he said with a disbelieving laugh, still not moving out of his chair. "Tagman is _dead_, Eames. Why aren't you with Carver and Deakins, planning a party to celebrate?"

She kicked her shoes off and dropped her bag on the floor of the entryway with a loud _thump_. "None of us ever said we wanted him to be beaten to death. Don't try to pin this on me so you don't have to think about your own actions."

"Go home, Alex." His voice, already cold when he had begun speaking, dropped another few degrees and Alex began to feel like she needed a scarf and mittens.

"I'm not going home, ok?" she said irately, striding into the room and approaching his seat. "This is 'home' half the time anyway. So stop trying to boot me out." She rounded the side of the chair cautiously, not sure what she was about to find.

His face had looked strained when he left her at the DAs office, but somehow it had managed to become even more drawn in the time between then and now. He sat slumped in his chair, balancing a glass of some sort of liquor on one of its arms with his left hand and supporting his drooping head with his right. "Right now, I don't really care what you do, as long as you don't bother me," he growled, refusing to look at her when she stopped in front of him.

"Damn it, Goren!" She snatched the glass out of his hand and set it on a table a few feet away, then turned back to him and found him glowering at her. "Take that look off your face. _I _am not the enemy."

"Yeah?" he snapped, giving her a look so dark that she almost retreated out of reflex. "Well, you're sure as hell not an ally."

"Bobby!" She just stared at him for a second, stunned at his uncharacteristic attack on her, then, praying for patience, she squatted in front of his chair, using his knees to balance herself. "I can't believe you'd say that. Even if no one else in the world is your ally, I am, and you know that!"

He looked away from her again, not wanting her to see the pain in his eyes when he made his next comment: "I looked at you, Alex. I looked at you over and over and over, waiting for you to say something. Waiting for you to help me explain where they went wrong. And you . . ." He made a disgusted noise and stood up abruptly, sending her to the floor when his knees disappeared from under his arms.

She wasn't hurt by the fall, which was only a matter of a few inches, but she lay, balanced on her elbow, for a long moment while she stared at him. "Bobby . . ."

"Don't!" Still, he offered her a hand to pull her upright, quickly releasing her when she was standing again. "You hung me out to dry. And you know you did it," he told her tersely, turning his back on her and heading for the kitchen.

"What the hell did you want me to do? Speak up and say that I thought they were right and you were wrong?" she yelled after him.

"Anything would have been better than nothing," he said as he leaned over the counter, his voice muffled by the hands he was scrubbing over his face. "At least then I could have talked it out with you instead of being double-teamed by them."

"Well then I'm sorry, ok? Next time I'll be sure to disagree with you in front of Deakins and Carver." She leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and crossed her arms, hating how defensive he was making her feel. "That's not how we work, Bobby, and you _know _it. Don't blame me for this, because if I_ had _said something, we'd be in the exact same situation right now - you'd just be hitting me with different words."

He flinched at her use of the word _hit_. "You don't understand," he said in a near-whisper, his words directed into the sink. "I have to . . . it's important that . . ."

"It's important that what?" she asked, lowering her voice to match his and walking closer to him.

"He's _dead_, Alex!" Bobby exploded, pushing violently away from the counter and throwing up his hands. "He's dead, and all anyone can say is 'good riddance.' Like he was some rabid animal that needed to be put down. You - you treated it like it was some sort of convenient compromise!"

She managed to hold her ground in the doorway, even in the face of his agitation. "He would be dead whether you had won or not. There's nothing anyone can do about that. In the end, it just didn't matter."

"Don't tell me 'it' didn't matter," he spat. "He was a 'he,' not an 'it,' and he didn't deserve the contempt that everyone . . ." He stopped and shut his mouth, shaking his head. "Just go, Alex."

"I already told you, I'm not leaving." She moved a few steps closer to him, keeping her eyes on his face, "I'm sorry I said 'it,' ok? You're right, he was a human being, if nothing else."

He didn't respond right away, looking like he was trying to decide whether her words were sincere or sarcastic. "If you can see that," he finally said, "then why can't you see that-"

"That what? He was normal? He wasn't, Bobby. Or maybe that he could be rehabilitated? You told him yourself that he couldn't be. So tell me, what is it that you think I don't see?"

"It wasn't first degree. He didn't want them dead. All of you knew that, but you were just so glad to nail him to the wall that you didn't care."

Alex could almost feel the last thin thread of her patience snap as she advanced on him, not stopping until she had backed him up against the counter. "Don't you tell me what I 'knew,' and don't lump me in with the rest of them," she said in a dangerously soft voice. "You're not as far into my head as you seem to think you are, and you got a lot farther into _his _head than it's safe to be."

"Alex . . ."

"I'm warning you now, don't argue with me about this, because you have no leg to stand on." She realized she was shaking a finger in his face threateningly and forced her hand down to her side. "Don't you dare tell me what I'm thinking."

He leaned back slightly and closed his eyes as he tried to regain something resembling composure. "Look, what I'm-"

"Shut _up_!"

His mouth snapped shut and his eyes widened at her near-scream.

"I'm done discussing this," she said shortly. "You're not listening to a word I'm saying." With that, she turned and headed back to where she'd dropped her bag when she came in. "I'm going to bed. Feel free to stay up and continue bitching about how inhuman I am."

"Alex! You can't . . ." Of course she could, and they both knew it. He supposed he should be thankful that she wasn't storming out and refusing to share a bed with him at all.

When exactly had she turned the tables on him, anyway? When she'd arrived tonight, he'd been comfortably ensconced in his own anger, and yet somehow now he was grateful that she wasn't deserting him? God, he should have known better than to . . .

. . . Than to what? Not 'than to get into a relationship with her,' because he didn't regret that in the slightest. Maybe 'than to give her such power over his emotions,' but that hadn't been a conscious choice in the first place. 'Than to think he could beat her in a fight,' he finally decided. When it came to that, he _really_ ought to have known better.

He sighed heavily, realizing suddenly that he was truly fatigued. Not just tired, physically, but _weary_, both physically and mentally. Of their own volition, his feet turned him toward the bedroom.

She had already turned out the lights, so when he stepped inside all he could see were the pale outlines of the bed and her in it.

"Bobby?" she said quietly in the darkness as she listened to him shuck off his belt and pants.

"Yeah." He did his best to make his voice emotionless.

"He didn't deserve to die like that. Even if we can't agree on anything else, I agree with you on that."

It was a peace gesture, and he was glad for it. Sighing, he pulled off his undershirt and said, "Let's just drop it. It's obviously . . . a sore point for both of us."

She didn't respond, and by the time he slid into the bed a few seconds later, he'd decided that she was asleep. Scooting over slightly so he was closer to her, he pressed a kiss on her cheek before lying back against the pillows.

"What was that for?" she startled him by asking, wiggling closer to him as she spoke.

"It was . . ." He shrugged as he draped an arm over her hip, then paused and moved his hand back over the area his arm had just covered, double-checking that he'd felt bare skin.

"What?" she asked, curious about the odd movement.

"I thought you'd be wearing a buttoned-up nightgown or something."

When she sighed and turned over to face him, he feared that he was about to get smacked, but instead she just pushed him gently onto his back and sprawled comfortably over him, one leg bent up across his stomach and an arm cradling his head. "That would be stupid. It's not like a nightgown is going to keep either one of us from ravishing each other."

"Well, you know . . . as a symbolic thing . . ."

She snorted, then pressed her lips to the side of his neck. "Damn, your girlfriends in the past were bitches, weren't they?" she mumbled into his skin. "Symbolism just does _not _belong in my sex life. Er, at least when it comes to revenge."

He lifted one hand to stroke her bare back. "I would hope revenge doesn't enter into your sex life at all."

"Well, not _real _revenge," she said with an almost audible smirk.

"Fake revenge, then?"

"You know," she said, sliding off him and tugging on his arm until he obligingly shifted most of his body on top of hers, "there's always minor revenges to be had." Before he could question that, she pulled his head down for a slow, thorough kiss, tracing her tongue over his lips.

A few seconds later, when she released his head, he was breathing hard. "Alex . . ."

"Minor revenges," she repeated thoughtfully, stroking a hand down the front of his body lightly. "Like if I were to, say, pull your arms out from under you," she said, doing just that and enjoying the _oof _noise he made as the sudden fall knocked some of the breath out of him, "well, that would be a suitable revenge for you knocking me over when I was kneeling by you earlier."

He got his hands back under him, but didn't lift his weight off of her. "I see. _That _kind of revenge."

"Mm-hmm." She tilted her head up for a kiss, enjoying the feeling of being enveloped in his body. "That kind."

"I'm sorry for that, by the way. Are you ok?"

"Just fine, although you're lucky I didn't decide retaliate by clocking you with that highball glass you were drinking out of."

He winced, knowing from experience that she packed quite a wallop when she decided to attack. "Uh, thanks, I think."

"Forgiven," she murmured, twining her arms around his neck to hold him to her. "Want to make it up to me?"

"Within reason," he said warily. "Nothing that involves me being humiliated in public, preferably."

"What I have in mind," she purred an inch away from his ear, "is _definitely _not intended for public viewing." To punctuate her words, she wrapped her legs around him and arched against him. "Just you and me."

He groaned at the touch of her body. "My favorite kind of apology to make."


End file.
